Microvi Awarded Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Honor

Microvi Biotechnologies announced today that they received an Honor Award for their Microvi MNE™ process for nitrate removal from drinking water as part of the 44th Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Awards. They were recognized for their technology’s ability to use a biological process to treat water without producing sludge—an unprecedented feature in biological technologies to date. 

The Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Awards honor the most noteworthy chemical engineering technologies commercialized anywhere in the world during the past two years. The prestigious award has recognized technologies since 1933 including industry-changing innovations such as the low-pressure oxo (LPO) process (1977), the low pressure, fluidized bed, low density polyethylene process (1979), and the anaerobic treatment of process wastewater (1991).

“Microvi is excited to have received this recognition for the commercialization of our biocatalytic nitrate removal technology. This prestigious honor celebrates our hard work and puts Microvi in line with the greatest innovations of the past 100 years,” said Dr. Fatemeh Shirazi, CEO of Microvi.

Nitrate is one of the foremost drinking water challenges today, contaminating groundwater around the world and posing threats to human health. Microvi’s nitrate solution is based on Microvi’s MicroNiche Engineering™ (MNE) platform, where novel materials science is used to control how organisms behave and perform in industrial bioprocesses. 

Using Microvi MNE, nitrate-contaminated water enters a reactor and the nitrate is degraded by organisms housed in biocatalyst composites and converted into nitrogen gas, a harmless byproduct. The technology has achieved approval for drinking water in California, Arizona and Australia. In 2013, the technology was implemented for Aboriginal communities in Western Australia—and the same biocatalysts are currently being used today with no deterioration in performance over five years. 

With its easy operation, simple maintenance and low energy needs, Microvi’s nitrate technology is disrupting the way water managers approach nitrate treatment by offering a lower-cost solution than ion exchange without producing biosolids or brine as a secondary waste stream.

About Microvi

Microvi is a green technology company based in the San Francisco Bay Area that delivers next-generation biotechnologies for the water, wastewater and renewable chemical industries. Microvi offers commercial technologies around the world to reduce waste, increase productivity and provide disruptive economics across the value chain. Learn more at www.microvi.com.
 

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CONTACT:

Microvi Marketing
info@microvi.com
510-344-0668